Bucky’s Blog: Local derby can set tone for rest of the season

Theo Robinson nets for Rovers in the 1-1 draw with Barnsley last month.

John Buckley

Published:06:00Thursday 15 January 2015

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The game on Saturday is massive for both clubs.

I’d say Barnsley are in a worse position than us, because we’ve got improved form at the moment and looking like we might be able to push forward and look towards the play-offs. They’ll be having a look over their shoulders if we can beat them.

In the last month we’ve been so much better. Certainly we’ve been better at home than we have previously, the system is looking better, and we have plenty of attacking options.

I was speaking to a friend of mine who does the stats for Barnsley and he was saying as much as they can play well and can be a good side, they really lack consistency, and Yeovil will feel unfortunate not to have got anything out of their game last weekend.

It’s a great chance for us again to get a home run going. We want to be up there and we look like we might be able to get amongst the play-off push.

You know what you’re going to get with a local derby, it is what it is. It’s always played at a frantic pace when Barnsley come to town.

It’s important to be the first team to settle, like we saw with the Coventry game. If we can score early on and concentrate we should be able to win it.

Andy Butler is a fantastic signing on a permanent deal, hopefully he’ll be able to help us to do that.

It’s a shame we’ll be missing Sam Johnstone. It’s disappointing the way that has happened because he’s a great goalkeeper. But maybe he’s just doing what’s best for him.

I still think there’s a lot of positives for the dressing room going into the game though, we outplayed arguably the best team in the league last time out at home.

We got rid of the monkey on our back at home, which was important. Okay, so Bristol got a draw here in the end but I thought we dominated them.